Reacting To PRO WRESTLING HOT TAKES Vol. 4 

I always found it endearing how Angle wasn’t afraid to be the butt of the joke. His comedic timing was always on point.

"I don't like my coffee too hot" it's literally a tepid take 😂

Angle is so underrated. He took to pro wrestling like a duck to water, dude. And even when he was doing terribly personally, he put TNA on his back.

In defence of Bret, he made everyone look good, elevating the whole roster, a real team player. Easier to appreciate if you lived through the Hogan days

I definitely agree about Angle. He is the GOAT imo. He was top-tier talent in every single aspect of pro wrestling.

The whole point on confidence is so valid. Not only in a wrestler finding their character and hitting their stride, but also in the audience accepting them and believing in their character. The audience can tell fakeness in wrestling and its very transparent and obvious when a wrestler is just acting their way through the motions. The Miz for example - whether he's heel or face, for me, I've just never bought into him - hes always screamed to me 'a guy playing a tough guy' and I just can't buy into that - when I see him wrestle I'm forever reminded that hes just playing a character. Whereas with Stone Cold I was able to suspend disbelief and believe that what I was getting was just an extension of the real Steve Austin. Its hard to explain but a lot of it is down to the pure confidence that a wrestler has in what they are doing

Kane rocking a cape is the equivalent to Larry David rocking one in the episode of Seinfeld 😂

Guys you need to understand to AMERICA is not the only metric for popularity. WWE is bigger now then the attitude era.

The Austin 3:16 promo has no right to be as good or memorable as it is. At its core, it's nothing more than a simple call out to Jake Roberts' gimmick at the time of born again Christian. If Roberts had a janitor gimmick, Austin could have said "You talk about being a janitor, talk about your cleaning supplies, talk about your mood... Well I just wiped the floor with your ass!"

I think Corbin is a talented guy but his ceiling is only upper midcard and he’s gotten there imo

Not sure if this is a hot take but my take is that in ring ability is the least important part of being a successful wrestler (as long as you’re not completely dangerous that is). If you’re completely bog standard in ring but have charisma, can tell a story and have a good look those things will take you way further than being a 5 star wrestler.

Corbin had great music and a cool finisher. I really don't hate him

I’m just re-discovering you guys. You guys did the Top10FTW series on Machinima back in the day 😭 thank you for all the fun and now I’ll be watching all your current content 🖤

Hot take: chops SUUUUUCK. Only someone like Gunther can make them look good, and for most everyone else a punch would look more impactful 100% of the time. And the "raw chest" from being chopped is easily the lamest "battle scar" to show off. I don't mind it as a transition/set-up in the corner but otherwise they can get in the bin. Especially those ridiculous back-and-forth macho "chop fights".

Hot Take: Wrestlemania 32 was not bad. Everyone knew the Triple H and Roman Match wasn't going to be good. Usos and the Dudley Boys had a really fun match, the IC Ladder Match was great!, Though AJ Styles lost, he and Jericho put together a good match. Charlotte, Becky and Sasha put on a killer Women's title match! Undertaker and Shane was exactly what everyone expected, a 1 spot match. The Rock appearance, though goofy, is fun. Its a mid-tier WM, not horrible like most say.

Better stories were told in the 2000s than the late 90s

Ruthless Aggression Era was definitely better WRESTLING WISE, but entertainment wise, ATTITUDE ERA IS THE GOAT OF ALL ERAS.

i have five hot takes.... 1.) The Nexus had absolutely no hope whether or not they won at Summerslam 2010: aside from Wade Barrett (Stu Bennett) no one in that faction screamed main event talent. 2.) Stone Cold prior to their neck injury in 1997 was the best wrestler on the planet. Aside from Bret Hart, no one was f**kin close... 3.) despite the shitty Katie Vick angle... ironically enough, this was probably Kane's strongest booked time in WWE. He was Intercontinental champion, Tag Team Champion and single handedly won a four way TLC tag team match... He was booked really strong, but it got overshadowed by the terrible storyline. 4.) I don't think going back to the TNA name is going to help in the long term. As much as I like TNA/Impact, I feel the name is tarnished 5.) MJF isn't as groundbreaking as people think he is

Baron Corbin's ceiling was his hair, the minute he shaved his head his career was over. He looks so much less intimidating and he was bound to end up doing the comedy stuff.

Rippley's ascension to top star was halted by Vince's obsession to keep Charlotte on top and Rousey being a huge name in women's combat sports. The only one who benefitted from them was Becky Lynch.

Hot Take: The reasons the 2015 Royal Rumble was bad were not because Roman won and Daniel Bryan was eliminated early. It was bad because it was horribly booked throughout, and the Authority ruined any excitement.

I think the turning point for Rhea as a character was once HHH took over as head of creative. Think about it, when she joined judgement day at first, she had promos that felt very forced under Vince, plus Vince did not have very good direction with her. Once HHH took over, he gave Rhea the freedom to be yourself and she gain crazy momentum off of that and became one of the fastest rising stars in wwe. I think the real way to get anyone over is let them be themselves in a sense that obviously have some restrictions or points they have to say, but let them deliver in their own way.

I love your guys reviews, but this form of content is by far my favorite. Not the hot takes part necessarily, but the Angle convo and then the Austin convo was great. Really enjoy when you guys try and diagnose wrestling stuff instead of just recapping stuff. Really shows your chemistry as well

Baron Corbin is in my top 5 fav current wrestlers.. His move set is so nasty, plus the deep 6 & end of days u can't go wrong with that

With the popularity vs attitude, I'd argue back then, Rock and Stone and Austin where house hold names even among non wrestling fans. Very few people whe don't follow wrestling would know who Seth or Roman are now

I think it’s pretty clear that the difference with Austin is he just started being himself.

I don't even think it's a hot take....RA was far better than AE for at least in ring action. Russo was booking 5 DQ, CO or non finishes every week. If you ask fans to name the top 5 matches of AE they struggle to remember 5. It was all about the angles vs the matches. What the Smackdown Six did was tremendous.

The Bloodline is the greatest faction in WWE history and potentially the best in wrestling as a whole. The existence of the bloodline as a faction validated a Roman heel turn that would propel him in into one of the best WWE superstars in history. It also enhanced the Usos as singles stars, made a 3+ year title reign entertaining (and with a heel champion which had never been seen before) but above all it is one of the only factions in history where the best storylines are by far from feuds not with other wrestlers but internal divisions that made it feel less like a wrestling faction and more like a true gang/stable with cracks where feuds would not end just with winners and losers but everyone having changed.

Wow, I felt the same way about Stone Cold. I couldn't stand him growing up. I didn't get it. Now I have pulled a Steve, like he did with bret hart. I love Stone Cold now and get it 100%.

Kane's original outfit did have a cape when they were designing it

My mom is 70 years old, and she was so scared of the attitude era corrupting me. She knew what the NWO was, who Steve Austin is, the DX "Suck it!". She knows nothing about wrestling. The attitude was part of the cultural zeitgeist in the late 90's. It was way more popular than the current era (at least in the states).

18:34 the answer is Paul heyman taught him how to cut a promo in ECW. The amount of people Paul molding into iconic personalities is unmeasurable

Was Larson looking for "quantify"?

To me the rhea situation was it toke her a while to recover from the charoltte loss

Look at Austin less as a wrestler and more of an actual character, and you'll see Stone Cold's appeal coming from actually being a character we could get behind, even way back when. The Attitude Era tapped right into the aging Gen-X nihilistic mentality, and in Austin we saw someone we would love to be deep down, telling our boss to go f#$+ himself while swigging beer and looking like a bad-ass doing so. "Stunning Steve Austin" was a blonde douche, the Ringmaster a faceless nobody, and his talent in-ring would have been for naught if no one cared. We were becoming, or already were, jaded pricks, so a face and force to commiserate with was needed.

I don't know man, maybe it can seem a bit repetitive, but I really enjoy what Matt and Nick bring to the ring. Maybe I just like their style, but even last year they had some fantastic matches. I think there is some lack of consistency for both objective and subjective reasons. I hope they'll come back around Revolution and we'll see them helping to revitalise the tag team division.

Corbin’s doing some good stuff down in NXT right now

2:23 My argument to that is, what after 2001 made Kane interesting or compelling? He came back from injury talking like a normal guy, Katie Vick, mask, imposter Kane, bad 2010 feud with Undertaker, came back with a boring mask, corporate Kane, retired.

Hot Take: Can't believe i'm saying this but, Keith Lee is the Marty Jannetty of Swerve in our Glory.

Yooooo where did you get the CM Punk figurine in front??? 10/10 choice for the desk

Friendos, HiaC was technically invented in the New Generation Era. Most people, including myself, consider the Montreal Screwjob and the subsequent "Good guys and bad guys" McMahon clip to be the start of the Attitude Era, and the first HiaC was a month before all that. I think Montreal being the start of thw Attitude Era makes a lot of sense because not only is it the inception of the Mr. McMahon character and the ascention of the newly formed DX, it also is around the time Cornette, who was the last remaining person in the writer's room from the old era, was relieved of his creative duties and Russo fully took over the creative.

My hot take. Every time Roman reigns appears on TV the quality of the show goes down.

I agree that angle is far and away much better. Only thing that hindered him was his addictions

2:29 I know it’s easy to bury Vince whenever something is bad, but remember Vince fed Kurt angle to Corbin for his RETIREMENT MATCH. Bec someone didn’t become world champion can’t always be because of Vince. Not to mention JBL and Corbin were great together and it lasted like a month for some reason

Oh hell yeah, I’ve been waiting for this: WWE should really take a page or two from traditional sports leagues. WWE fucked up the easiest gimmicks with Survivor Series. Treating it like the All-Star Game with a fan vote to determine who makes each brand’s team is the perfect way to determine who the fans want to see. Drafting straight from NXT the night after WrestleMania is the perfect way to bring in new talent and make Shield/Nexus-type call-ups a bigger deal. Even changing how NXT works with a points system to make it one giant tournament to see who the next first draft pick is would be really interesting. You can still be silly and spooky with a lot of characters like Lucha Underground used to but so many wrestlers don’t have those sorts of gimmicks anymore, so it might not matter as much. I’m not saying they should move to a full sports presentation like NJPW but there’s so many simple things they do wrong.

My hot take would be: Daniel Garcia is just a boring version / wannabe Alex Wright.

To me the thing that puts Attitude above Ruthless was the undercard. You had like the new age outlaws, headbangers, Kane, Ken Shamrock, etc. Where with Ruthless you just had 100 Randy Orton Xerox copies of dudes no one remembers and some super terrible muscle guys. The top of the card was amazing but it took a steep nose dive.

100% accurate assessment of Attitude vs. RA. Ruthless had waaay better in-ring talent in the upper card, maybe even middle card. Attitude era had better characters, promos and the crowds were white hot. I'll take the Attitude Era but the man's take is at least a reasonable one with merit.

Monday Night Raw got bigger ratings than Monday Night Football during the Attitude Era. I know it's the cool new thing to do to try and pretend some other era was better or more popular but none of them outdrew the NFL so they are simply and factually wrong.

Sometimes you guys say you don't like something but admit you wermt watching at the time

Technically officially the attitude era started early November 1997 and the first ever hell in a cell was in october of 1997 so technically yeah hell in a cell was new generation "this all comes from wikipedia"

Look at the charisma difference between the Natural Dustin Rhodes and Goldust

Maybe the thing with Austin and Rock is the whole thing Chris Jericho often talks about ... that being the best characters are the real people behind the gimmick turned up to 11. Austin and Rock's gimmick feel very much like the people they portray off screen. So maybe it's that.

Aye, AJ Daniels got a question in. Cool!

Swerve is a badass who doesn't need a comedy act by his side. Prince Nana looks like a fool next to him and it detracts from Swerve's presentation.

Vince didn't bury Barron Corbin.

I actually like the heel turn the Young Bucks are on rn, it could possibly be great (or fall flat)

I grew up more in the ruthless aggression era but i still think the attitude era is better if u just got back and compare any random raw smackdown or ppv from either period not saying ruthless aggression didnt have it’s moment’s but 9 out of 10 times i personally find the attitude era more enjoyable and understand why 4-8 million people dropped off like flies after 2001

Thanks for responding to my “Hot Take” why do you think Kurt Angle isn’t held in high regard like he should be? What is holding him back?

That CM Punk award or statue looks so life like it’s distracting

Thanks for your thoughts on my “Hot Take” 😎

What changed between Ringmaster to Stone Cold: adderall was released at the very end of 1996. It's night and day difference. The Attitude Era = The Adderall Era. SCSA even mentions on his podcast he had taken "too many caffeine pills" on his WM19 match with the Rock such that his heart was shutting down and he was experiencing stimulant psychosis. Sure, caffeine. It's alarming how much of the attitude era can be chalked up to amphetamine.

Hot take but they should’ve pushed Owen over Brett. Brett was the better technical wrestler (barely) but Owen did everything else better (spots, promos and just overall athleticism).

What happened to the friendo awards?

I think The Rock versus Roman reigns either at elimination chamber or at WrestleMania is not going to go well match wise. They really should have gotten them together much earlier in the tribal Chief era.

They should've turned Corbin face during the initial bum ass Corbin phase. Crowd was getting behind him. The flip to Happy Corbin and pairing with Moss was rough.

Hot Take Rick Flair is AEWs Mae Young 😂

The young bucks are what brought me to aew period, Kenny was announced after it was created but the bucks were The concept of aew and they literally cooled themselves off at the hottest point of their career

Here is my hot take, drop AEW Rampage and get ROH a tv deal on fridays. Most of the people on rampage are ROH so it makes no sense to have a whole night every week where we have to watch crappy promo-less matches that mean jack.

I grew up in the attitude Era, and I still think the ruthless aggression was by far better. I went back to watch the attitude Era a few years ago and it was AWFUL.

9:09 That's just crazy

As someone who started watching wrestling in 1999 and had my formative years as a fan in both the Attitude Era and Ruthless Aggression Era, I can certainly see why people prefer it to the AE. Wrestling wise RA kills AE because we had that influx of wrestlers coming from WCW, the work rate guys in Benoit, Mysterio, Jericho, Guerrero, you had the full come up of Kurt Angle, and just a higher rate of in ring action. Undertaker would deliver both good matches and good promos as the American Badass, and hell even Big Show cooked in ring. Attitude Era did not prioritze the ring work and so it suffered, I will say though that nothing can beat a hot Attitude Era main event with Rock or Austin. In fact, I think we kind of underrate how good of a worker Rock could be and how good he got as the AE went on. With "respect to women" it's honestly a wash cause both had some really trash shit that the women had to do. Yes, women were allowed to actually wrestle in the RA, but they still had all the trash angles and stuff that would turn people off (HLA coming to mind immediately). This is also when Vince went full pervert old man. It started in 2001 with the Trish stuff, but maxed out during the RA; don't get me wrong RA Vince is insane and there is so much I enjoy about that era of Vince (Durag Vince is the GOAT ECW Champ), but it got out of hand in a lot of ways. Overall, I think they are about on equal footing in terms of positive aspects, AE had star power and a chaotic energy that has been so had to recreate, and the RA had great in ring work and more balanced shows. But both also have a hefty amount of negatives, people will gloss over how boring a lot of the RA shows could be and how formulaic they were at times. I still prefer the Attitude Era because that is what got me into wrestling and it's hard to shake what you first loved, but I am a fan of the RA as well.

Another wrestler who looks completely different from company to company is mox/Ambrose. Oh what a beard can do

Quantify guys 😅🤣😂

People forget the bad about the attitude era. The amount of stables was just annoying. Watching los boriquas against the disciples of apocalypse for the seventh time was just awful.

First? Larson for President/Steve for Vice President

Probably not a hot take but: Triple H in tights > Triple H in trunks.

I wasn’t watching wrestling during the diva’s revolution so I don’t know how well Rhea was during that era or when she joined Edge’s judgment day. Tho looking at Rhea now, I think she wouldn’t have been this big without Dom cause this Mami gimmick is over as hell!

Of course Angle's better with mic skills & wrestling combined. The only Rock match I remember fondly was Hogan. 👍

Corbin should have kept that biker gear, come out on a bike, be the lone wolf and not a pirate, Corbin should win nxt title. Lose it to nobody he just relinquish it. Goes to raw to challenge for a title maybe Corbin can win the ic title in a match against Gunther

It's pro wrestling, and there's more than one way to peel a potato. At the end of the day, people cared deeply about Bret Hart and that was almost entirely due to his performance in the ring, how he constructed and executed in his matches. That's why Sid was a great character when he'd say some nonsense and powerbomb people and get over, why Bret was great when he worked careful and methodical matches full of story and little details, and why Austin was great even after the broken neck when he just brawled and beat the snot out of people. It's why Hulk Hogan was great when he captured the zeitgeist, and why Mick Foley was great when he couldn't be more different from the guys I just mentioned. All that really matters is if you can take what you have, exemplify it, and draw the best result from it you can--while also being safe enough that you don't let down the people you're performing with. Bret Hart was small by the standards of the era he wrestled in, he wasn't convincing on the microphone, and he kind of looked like just some guy you'd see in the stands at a hockey game. Despite that, he managed to get the crowd to care deeply about him and everything he was doing. That's why he's one of the greatest of all time, even if he lacked flash.

Attitude era is like roids in baseball. Frowned upon due to the inappropriate nature, especially looking back today, but saved the business.

Vince Russo is a better Booker than Tony Khan because Rousseau at least worked under Vince McMahon it had some knowledge or Tony Khan just puts matches together.

Vince buried Kross significantly worse.

Steve hits it on the head. What logically do the Elite bring to WWE at this point? Maybe you could've gotten The Young Bucks vs Usos and possibly the The Elite vs New Day thing Xavier Woods and Kenny Omega wanted, but right now Kenny Omega is worn down and has the diverticulitis and that means he may not have too long left to deliver top level matches and likely the best of Kenny Omega is done. And the Young Bucks are about as irrelevant of an act as you could get cause nothing interesting or exciting is on the horizon, even with this heel turn they'll do. Hangman, by his distance from those core 3, is set up to actually do cool and interesting things and (prior to Cousin Phil returning) could've been someone WWE could bring in. At this point, the trio of Kenny and the Bucks are of no real high value to either WWE or AEW. Aside putting people over, they really don't bring much to AEW.

Young Bucks are the Randy Orton of tag teams

as an eternal bret hart hater i agree with that take lmao

Wwe is #10 on youtube....that makes up a lot.

Okay so I saw the ruthless aggression attitude era thing on the main picture of the video. I'll go one step further, today's wrestling sucks so badly that I would even put the crappy mid-90s New generation era above it. The problem is the attitude era and ruthless aggression era spoiled me. Pro wrestling for the first time in history became sexy. And literally everybody was watching. Like you went to the mall and you would see 10 other people wearing wrestling shirts. Nowadays the rating for all wrestling can't be any lower. Aew struggles to get a million viewers and usually doesn't. WWE struggles to get 2 million. Take the higher number. Imagine in 1999 if an average episode of raw got 2 million viewers. Vince McMahon would freak out. They were scoring between 5 and 6 million views.

LUKE WARM LUKE OWEN!

corbin got the worse shit to work with and took his best themes away for a goofy ass happy corbin gimmick

Angle is a better all arounder. But go back and watch just about any AE show with Rock on it, and he's making whoever they sent out there to promo with him look like a moron. You literally COULDN'T be in a promo seg with him. He didn't even have to make sense, and he had the crowd in his hand. Once that happened, the match didn't need to be anything special because the crowd was always going to be there for it. Same as Hogan.

Hot take: Eddie Kingston flops too much and it undermines his tough character horribly.

Here's my hot take...despite the success and where it's led to, WrestleMania 1 was not that good. Neither was WrestleMania 2

That bret take really is the stupidest take possible

TNA at its peak was hotter and more enjoyable than AEW at its peak

What if Vince wasn’t such a scumbag?

Kurt Angle is by far a better wrestler than The Rock, and on the mic..... Kurt is almost as good.

9:52 171 m people saw the rock return. Attitude era could never reach that many people. 10 m views then how else would you see attitude era clips? Complete disagree

Jeff Hardy is criminally overrated. He's just a weird emo Sabu, except Sabu actually did stuff that would be exciting to watch. Additionally, "daredevil" is politically correct "not athletic enough to ever land on his feet"